About the Winter Banner for 2019/20
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"The Winter Garden: Scented Sprigs and Feisty Flowers" by Susan Christopher-Coulson (Shirley Sherwood Collection) coloured pencil

About Susan Christopher Coulson
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Susan Christopher Coulson at the PV for Modern Masterpieces of Botanical Art at the Shirley Sherwood Gallery - where "The Winter Garden: Scented Sprigs and Feisty Flowers" is currently hanging

She focused on developing drawings based on natural subjects, including botanical, and expanding her coloured pencil techniques, which have been her preferred medium since childhood. Their potential to create rich tonal depths as well as subtle transitions and translucent colours is a constant fascination as are the infinite possibilities offered by the botanical subjects, which she prefers to draw directly from live subjects.

Group of coloured pencil drawings by Susan Christopher Coulson exhibited at the Annual Exhibition of the Society of Botanical Artists in 2015. (top left) Cures from the Potager; (top right) Bean Counting: In Pursuit of Diversity; (bottom left ) Medieval Medicinals, from an Apothcary's Garden; (bottom right) Winter Greens: In pursuit of Form and Colour in the Winter Garden

Susan Christopher Coulson demonstrating how to use coloured pencils for botanical art at the RHS Botanical Art Show in 2016

Future Banners
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About Botanical Images Scotia (BISCOT)
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Fran Thomas (Scotland, UK) - Scottish Native Cladonia Lichens (GOLD Medal)

Mally Francis with her painting of Babington’s Leek (Allium ampeloprasum var.babingtonii) at the RHS Botanical Art Show 2018 (12 July 2018)

Mally Francis - a Timeline in Botanical Art
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She was a particularly lovely person and always very kind. I have known her for well over 30 years. She started botanical painting with me at the Leicester college and became a member of the LSBI. She also attended many of my Summer Schools at Market Overton. She then moved to Cornwall and started teaching but we kept in contact and I have always heard particularly flattering comments about her teaching. I am sure that all who had the privilege of knowing her will miss her
Anne-Marie Evans

The Studio was originally built about 250 years ago as the Sawpit for the Heligan estate when logs were dragged in by a horse and then cut into planks and beams by two men using a pit saw. One above, standing on the log (the top-dog) and the other below in the pit, covered in sweat and sawdust, (the under-dog).
When we bought The Wagon House in 1997 the Sawpit had become a ruin with only two cob walls standing and the brick piers opposite to support the roof.
In 1999 we commenced the restoration and it came into full use as our studio early in 2000. The Sawpit, thirty feet long and six feet deep still remains beneath the floor as a little piece of Heligan history. 
Nowadays, the Sawpit is in full time use again, either for the Botanical Painting classes or as a Photographic Studio. A collection of old saws are attached to the roof beams.

My teaching philosophy is to encourage all students to develop their own skills to the highest level possible. There is never any competition in my classes and everyone can work at their own pace. The courses are always enjoyable and old friends meet each other year after year as they return to continue their studies. Everyone has their own aspirations and it gives me great pleasure to help them to achieve their own goals.
Mally Francis (in Mally Francis Paints the Lost Gardens of Heligan
February 1, 2011 by Tania Marien)

a still from the video about her botanical painting classes at the Wagon House

The Florilegium was the inspiration of Mally Francis FCPGFS, FEPFS who founded the Society in 2000, and was its Chairman from 2001 to 2012. Mally stepped down in January 2012, and was made Honorary Founder Chairman of the Society, and a Fellow of The Linnean Society in recognition of her contributions to world of Botanical Illustration and Botany.
Eden Project Florilegium Society

Angela Lober (Araucaria heterophylla) and the video

The Exhibition
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New Zealand:
​‘Ngāi Tipu Taketake – Indigenous Flora’

Scotland - Flora Scotia
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Dear friends, artists and supporters, please come and join us for a glass of wine on Saturday 31st March at the opening of the Flora Scotia exhibition, John Hope Gateway, Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, 3.30 - 5.30 pm. We look forward to seeing you there!

Kew Gardens - Australian Flora: three new exhibitions
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The Finnis Scott Foundation Botanical Art Award (£10,000)

discrete projects that promote and encourage the practice and appreciation of botanical painting.

The judges are looking to reward fresh ideas, original projects and new ways of working.